Tuesday, September 27, 2011

We have an annual meeting for the women at our church called the General Relief Society Meeting. We are able to hear talks specifically for us and this talk by President Uchtdorf about the Forget Me Not flower was ecspecially powerful.

I absolutely love my water/sensory table and so do my children. If you don't have one you can use a shallow rubbermaid container or a dishpan works well too.

This without question is my children's favorite activity for the water/sensory table. I bought a bunch of silk leaves, I throw in some brown pom poms(nuts), add these cute little squirrels(I found them at Oriental Trading), a *tree made out of a recycled coffee can, some tongs, and programmed leaves with numbers on them.

We use it in lots of different ways:

1. COUNTING AND ADDING

They pick a card and then hunt like squirrels to find that number of nuts in the leaves picking them up with the tongs and take them back to the tree. As they have gotten older they pick two cards and add them together and find that many nuts.

2. GROUPING

They group the squirrels by the different items they hold or the leaves by shape or color.

3. IMAGINATIVE

They just love to play with the squirrels in the leaves.

4. SMALL MOTOR SKILLS

By using the tongs in #1 this is a great small motor skill activity.

*I made the tree by taking brown construction paper and made it to look like a tree. Then cut the paper to size and glue it to the can(the great thing about the can is I saved the plastic lid and so I can store all the other items in the can until I need it again).

A new version of bobbing for apples-cut apple shapes out of craft foam, with a permanent marker write upper case A on half and lower case on the other half. I float them in a tub of water that is half full and have the kids grab them out with tongs seperating them into upper and lowercase groups by sticking them to the side of the tub and saying the sound A's make.

Throw play apples into a bushel basket singing the a song. (the A says ahhhhh the A says ahhhhh every letter makes a sound the A says ahhhhhhh.

Go to an orchard and pick apples if you can.

Cut apple in half both ways and dip into red paint and make apple prints.

Apple tree sequencing cards.

Read books about apples.

Get red and green pom poms and have them seperate them into groups and then count them into baskets. For fine motor skill you can also have them pick up the pom poms with a clothes pin or kiddie chopsticks.

Program tree patterns with different letters on them and using the pom poms above play apple tree bingo.

Spray foam balls with red spray paint and then with a skewer poke 2-3 holes through the ball. At the top of the ball poke a green pipe cleaner in and make it into the shape of a stem and leaf and glue into place. For each ball take a green pipe cleaner and bend both ends over a half inch, this is your worm. You now have apples and wormmsa nd you have the children weave the worms through the apple holes. They love it!!!

Most of you don't know this but before I started this blog I had a preschool blog and I had all my projects on my family blog. I decided that I wanted my family blog to be completely seperate from everything else so born was Sweet Serendipity. Also another factoid I home preschooled all my kiddos. I actually started my preschool blog as more of my own personal teaching plan for the year and so I took little to no pictures. It was for me to refer back to year after year. I have decided I would share some of my plans and ideas here and remember the pictures are very limited but it is always fun to share thoughts and ideas.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

If you have not heard of Cozi.com it is a fabulous FREE online calendar. This one of my favorite things ever. Here is a list of some of the reasons why:

1. Every person in the family has a different colored dot assigned to them so at a glance you can see who has something to do that day
2. You can also have it programmed to send reminders to those of us that are absent minded at times or if something came up at the last minute you can send it right to their phone or email address
3. There is a to do list , grocery list, and journaling area all are printable and can be sent to your mobile device as well
4. If you have a reoccuring appt you just need to put it in once, think of volunteering in your childs class every week
5. Everyone in my family can access it which keeps us all on the same page.

Check it out..it has made our lives so much more organized..even though I did forget to do something yesterday and why was that I forgot to put it in my calendar that is why!

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

I would like to start off by apologizing for my lack of blogginess lately. I was in a car accident and I am fine but it takes some time to recover from things like that and so the blog as much as I love it was the first thing to go.

I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and we are currently teaching our children The Articles of Faith. I would like to give a quick explanation of what the Articles of Faith are before going any furthur: Joseph Smith first wrote them in a letter to John Wentworth, editor of the Chicago Democrat, in answer to his request to know what members of the Church believed. The letter became known as the Wentworth Letter and was first published in the Times and Seasons in March 1842. On 10 October 1880, the Articles of Faith were formally accepted as scripture by the vote of the members of the Church and were included as part of the Pearl of Great Price.

Now to the fun. To encourage our children to not only learn them but memorize them I made this chart(now if you have something else you would like your children to learn this concept can work for it too):

It is a simple chart made with poster board and markers. I attached the candy with double sided tape and then attached it with double sided tape to the inside of the cabinet door which houses our scriptures.

For every Article of Faith they memorize they get to take a piece of candy off the board. My children are sooo excited and they are pulling out their scriptures all the time now!!!

Sunday, September 11, 2011

I remember that morning well. I was so excited. My fiance at the time now he is me dear sweet husband was coming over and we were going to work on wedding invitations. He came over early and took my daycare children to school. I was so looking forward to spending this morning with each other, it had been awhile that we had spent any time with each other without children around since the crazy school schedule had started back up. I was sitting in my livingroom diligently working away when he came running into the house and turned on the TV. I can tell you I was a bit frustrated with this I really wanted the time to be spent chatting and planning. I kept on working. I hate to admit it but due to my frustration I barely even payed attention to the news cast and when I did I was unempathetic simply because I was not completely aware of what was actually happening. As the day went on and the days following my heart went out to the families, the coworkers, and the country for our lives would never be the same after that dreadful day the towers came down.

I believe everything happens for a reason and even though if I could turn the clock back to before that day when we felt safe, before peoples lives changed forever, before fear fills you at the airport, before you questioned intentions of the stranger in the line next to you, before we judged others so harshly for their race and religion.... I wouldn't because we became stronger, we became aware, we became humble, we became united, we became empathetic, we became more reliant on our Savior Jesus Christ, we became grateful to Heavenly Father. I like how we were BEFORE but I love who we are BECOMING!

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

* a brief disclaimer.....I want to start off by saying I am ever grateful for our truckload of treasures or this room would have stayed empty for years to come as well as some other underfurnished rooms. So thank you to my dad and stepmom, they were very generous!

I was talking to a friend the other day and she felt like she wasn't enough but she is fabulous..you hear me you are FABULOUS!!! I said we all feel like we aren't enough sometimes and she said but you are always doing something. This is when I realized I became one of them. You know the women that appear to have it all and are all together on the outside. Put on their best face. Never share their failures you know one of those women that make the rest of us feel as though we can never measure up. It broke my heart because I swore I would never be one of those women.... I would always be real.

The REAL reality of it all is I LOVE serving, creating, doing. When I stop I become less of who I am. I fall into a depression that I literally have to pull myself up out off and if I don't catch it quick enough it is a real issue. This is my reality. The part of me that others don't see. They don't see me in bed for 3 days, unshowered, and bedraggled...they see me at my best, when I am on my A game..well I really don't have an A game my E game(E for Effort)..... some day I will be perfect but that day is not today or tomorrow either so I will settle for my E game.

Here is a glimpse into my REAL reality:

and most of all this:

This is my reality and this reality would not be too bad if every room was perfect...they are not by any stretch of the imagination. I have boxes in almost every closet waiting to be unpacked(maybe if they are left there long enough I can say we don't need the items in said boxes and we can give them away).

We often in blogland shy away from reality and show our fabulous projects in our clean houses but how often do we shove something aside to take that perfect picture. I know I do! I wanted to share a bit of my reality so you would know I am just like some of you..I have a reality and it is very real! Now off I go to deal with some of this reality!!!